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St. Catharines wants Region to review garbage collection contract

St. Catharines city council is calling on Niagara Region to review its contract with Emterra following garbage and recycling collection delays across Niagara during the recent holidays. (Julie Jocsak/Standard file photo)

St. Catharines city council is urging Niagara Region to review the contract with its waste collection contractor Emterra.

The move comes after lengthy pickup delays across Niagara in the weeks after Christmas and New Year’s Day.

“All of us around this table have dealt with a great number of concerns and anger, frankly, over the last six weeks as waste management issues piled up across the city,” said St. Patrick’s Coun. Mat Siscoe, who made the motion.

He said his neighbourhood went two weeks without garbage collection over Christmas and trash bags piled up at the end of driveways. People even dropped them off in front of his house, not realizing garbage pickup is a regional responsibility.

Siscoe said the Region’s waste management staff worked hard through those issues on behalf of residents. He added he understood if city councillors wanted to defer the motion for a time, given the problems seem to be mitigated for the short term.

But he said they’ve experienced problems over the past couple of years and enough frustration over the past couple of months.

“I think we need to send a message — this isn’t appropriate. Taxpayers pay good dollars towards waste management. They expect their garbage to be picked up in a timely manner.”

Council voted unanimously to ask the Region to review the Emterra contract and compare and explore alternate waste collection service providers.

Grantham Coun. Sandie Bellows said she went two or three weeks without garbage collection and spoke with drivers and employees.

She said sometimes companies lowball when they apply for projects and the employees don’t get paid very much.

She said wages have to be paid decently for the workers.

“It’s not against the employees who are doing the job,” she said of the motion, adding the Region must look at possibly having another contractor come in and address the issues.

Emterra said earlier in the month that a shortage of staff was one of the contributing factors in the delay of waste, recycling and organics collection after the holidays.

Other factors included large volumes of materials placed at the curb during the holiday season and heavier than normal snowfalls which slowed down the pickups.

Temperatures and wind chills of nearly –30 C impacted the operation of vehicles and its workers as well.